BRENGLE'S OPTIMISM: ROOTED IN THE HOLY SPIRIT -2- Conclusion

Soldier and Servant

Biographical Sketch from They Knew Their God, Volume 1

Who would have thought it!  Young, formerly ambitious Brengle on his knees polishing eighteen pair of boots!  He who had turned down the call to a popular pulpit of a large Methodist Church in an American city was actually performing this most menial task in the Salvation Army Training Barracks in London.  The struggle was sharp but short.  He wondered if all his educational advantages and personal talents were being thrown away.  Then the Holy Spirit brought to his remembrance his Great Exemplar.  “If Jesus could wash the disciples’ feet, I can blacken the Cadets’ boots!” was the happy conclusion.  And so young Brengle accepted cheerfully William Booth’s rigorous methods of training soldiers of the Cross, and for almost half a century he was to be a highly used specialist in promoting a deep concept of consecration and holy living in the worldwide circle of Salvation Army influence.

PART TWO

The basis for Brengle’s optimism concerning the Army’s future was thus based upon his confidence in the possibilities of God’s grace as experienced and expressed in the life of holiness. He presented this vision in terms of its biblical mandate:
If the future of the Salvation Army is still to be glorious, we must heed the exhortation: “Let brotherly love continue.” ... This is that for which Jesus pleaded on that last night before His crucifixion: “This is My commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. ...” This is that for which Paul pleaded and labored: “And the Lord make you increase and abound in love one toward another and toward all men ... to the end He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God.” ... This is that to which Peter exhorted the universal church: “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.” ... How else but by fullness of love for one another can we fulfill those supernatural requirements expressed by Paul and Peter?



He believed that only as holiness remains the touchstone of Army mission, will its effectiveness continue. In this light, he wrote: “In so far as this spirit rules in our hearts God can work with us and bless us, and the spiritual triumphs and glory of the Army for the future are assured. But in so far as these graces of the Spirit in us fail, so far will the Army as a spiritual power in the earth fail.”

In the aftermath of the crisis surrounding the events of the 1929 High Council, Brengle recognized the need for servant leadership.



He urged Salvationists to pursue self–sacrificial love in the context of organizational reform, contrasting such an attitude with the self–seeking, selfish spirit of Diotrephes (3 John 9–10):
The testing time of a great organization comes when its founder and makers pass away and its leadership and destiny fall into the hands of the men of the third generation who were not its makers, but were made by the organization. It is when such a founder and the devoted men who with him made the Organization pass to their reward, leaving places of power, of trust, of honor and influence to be filled by other men, that the men of the Tribe of Diotrephes bestir themselves. They have one invariable mark; one distinguishing spirit...every one “loveth to have the pre–eminence”—not pre–eminence in goodness, Christlikeness, brotherly love, humility, meekness, or holiness, but pre–eminence in name, in fame, popular acclaim, in wealth, in place, or authority. These it is that the members of the tribe lust after, scheme, plot and plan, whisper and fawn and flatter and backbite to obtain. Each and every Diotrephesian is a follower, not of Christ but the Antichrist.

With the passing of “the absolute though paternal autocracy of our Founder,” Brengle saw opportunity for such reform making possible “a strange new freedom” within the Army, which could easily be dominated by a “Diotrephesian spirit.” He cautioned Salvationists not to allow reform “to destroy the balance between the centripetal and centrifugal forces which can alone sustain us as a unified, compact, joyous, conquering Army in the face of world–wide diversity of conditions and needs.”

In the context of major reform in Army leadership structures, he warned against allowing personal ambition and self–seeking to lead to schism. The Army must be careful to maintain the “spirit of service without thought of personal reward.”

Also important for the future success of the Army, according to Brengle, was the need to remain separate from the world, by which he meant to be “in the world, but not of it.” In the context of the Army’s growing social acceptance and temptations to become entangled with the world, he wrote:
And so the Salvation Army, through more than fifty years of detachment, separateness from the world, and uncompromising, single–eyed devotion to its one Master and the work He has given it to do, has come at last to world recognition and acclaim. But with this recognition come temptations more subtle and dangers more destructive than any which have beset us in the past. Only by the uttermost circumspection, self–denial, and faithfulness to our great calling can we hope to escape the snares that beset and will beset us. ... Wherever the children of God have been seduced by the world’s glitter and flattery, and accepted its offers and entered into alliance with it, spiritual decay has begun.

Brengle saw that the greatest danger to any religious organization is that a body of men should arise in its ranks, and hold positions of trust, who have learned its great fundamental doctrines by rote out of a catechism, but have no experimental knowledge of their truth inwrought by the anointing of the Holy Ghost. 
In looking back through the first sixty years of the Army’s history, Brengle saw “the story of a succession of spiritual miracles, daredevil exploits, martyr- like sacrifices, all nights of prayer ... solemn life–long consecrations, toils and tears, occasional defeats and shouts of triumphs.” He maintained that Christ crucified (“the Bleeding Lamb”) was the foundation and “chief cornerstone” of William Booth’s army.

He quoted the Founder as saying: “If there ever comes a time when the Salvation Army ceases to get people baptized with the Holy Ghost, I pray God sweep it from the face of the earth, for it will then be but a corpse, an offence, and a cumberer of the ground.”



So, for Booth, the Army’s holiness teaching was foundational for her identity and mission. Brengle agreed, and questioned those who think that with changing times, new theological emphases are needed: “Times are always changing. But the Holy Spirit is the same yesterday, today and forever. But maybe we have changed with the times, and no longer believe in and instantly depend on the ever–present and active help of the Holy Spirit as did the early Salvationists!”

These are challenging words to an Army, which in its efforts to stay relevant, is ever in danger of losing sight of its holiness heritage, and thus being cut off from the source of its spiritual power and effectiveness.